#258 Fat Baby Robin 12/9/19

After the trauma of Wallace, and afraid of wanting to "trace" a photo, I chose something simple enough to sketch easily: the fat baby robin.  Sketched quick, painted quick, wanted something to undo yesterday.  It worked out ok.  Lots of brush marks, and he could use some tweaking, but overall a feeling of satisfaction.

#255, #256, #257 Cat Night 12/8/19

The dogs had their day, now it is time for a few cats.  Not Batman this time.  My son Matt and his wife Eva have two cats, Wallace and Francisco.  Francisco used to be named Steve for a short time, but it didn't catch on and they changed it up.  Dave and I thought for sure they'd name him "Grommit" since that was a favorite video of the boys when they were young.  We visited Matt and Eva in October.  Usually their cats are indifferent to me, but they have some competition in their lives now: Luke.  Yes, a human baby was born to Matt and Eva and now Wallace and Francisco are not the center of attention.....so they were willing to hang with me on this visit.  I loved the photo of them at the front window.  They spend quite a bit of time there, being tormented at times by the bajillion little lizards that are all over the outdoors in Florida.  I painted the window version of the two cats first, and it went pretty quick - I think because it didn't involve trying to get their faces painted.  Free-hand drawing once again tonight, I felt pretty good about this one.

So I moved on to a second try at the little white cat that I photographed at the Pumpkin Patch.  I had done the cat on one of the tiny easel canvases 3 months ago.  By comparison this version is huge (perhaps an exaggeration, it is 5in x 5in).  I free-handed it again and it went down pretty quick.  But then I decided to "fix" the paws in front, which then led to a cascade of fixing the next nearest thing (more white, less white, more shadow here, no take that shadow out, etc etc etc).  Finally, I put it down.

With still time, I went for a third cat.  This time Wallace alone.  He was sitting at my feet one day, sphinx-like, as if he was guarding me (perhaps in case any of those lizards got in the house).  I took some pictures, and of course he pulled in one of his paws, losing his sphinx pose, but still a paintable  photo.  Well, this painting turned out to be traumatic for me.  I think I've spent about 6 hours on this one, and I STILL can't get him right.  And then I think, if I had just done a simple tracing I could have finished him in an hour...a simple tracing, why didn't I just do a simple tracing.  But then why didn't my drawing suffice, like it did for Stella and Jack?  Frustrating, very frustrating.  I played with the chin, over and over, repainted the eyes, the ears, the stripes...nothing made him look like Wallace.  Grrrrrr!

Is this a cat, or a rat?  It needs work!!!

After hours of messing with the painting, he's more cat-like, just not Wallace-like.

Weeks later, I messed with him again and I'm finally going to put down varnish and call it quits!

And....I continued to mess with him, even after I decided to call it quits.

#253 and #254 Stella and Jack 12/7/19

More dogs on the menu tonight.....more free-hand drawn dogs.  These turned out lovely, if I do say so myself.  I just love Stella.  Stella was a dog that visited my Farmer's Market stand over the summer.  I asked her owner if I could take some photos, she said sure.  Finally, months later, I felt Stella calling.  I thought perhaps the pics didn't have a good angle, the head looked huge and the body small, would it translate to a decent painting?  I gave it a go, and decided not to be a ninny and sketch the animal myself, with the idea that sketched creatures look more "alive" than traced creatures.  That's not really true, as some sketches seem to work and others are horrible miscreants (of course I'm talking about PITA the Parrot).  Stella came alive and looks just as I remember her. 

Stella

The second dog of the night is my brother Doug's dog, a black lab named Jack.  Jack comes on family vacations with us and is a very well-behaved dog.  This past summer Jack had some sort of medical issue, a wound that was having trouble healing, so he was a bit more reserved and looked a bit depressed.  Still, I took some photos with the intent to paint his sad face.  He turned out good, I think.  I might be getting the hang of this "drawing" thing!

#252 Beagle 12/5/19

The first oil of December, I've had WAY too long of a break.  The project at work that has consumed me is mostly done now, and I can hopefully get back to my regular life.  I decided on the cute beagle, free-handed the drawing and painted fast.  It looks a bit too fast if you ask me, kind of sloppy. But it was my foot coming back in the door, me getting back up on the horse, a begin-again, so I didn't want to get bogged down with anything that would make me go back to a non-painting existence.  According to Bob Ross, people who paint are a "happy bunch", who wouldn't want to be part of that?  I think I got the likeness of the face ok, he's just rather too loose perhaps, the shoulder is missing and the back hip is incomplete.  I'm not going to put the source picture here, as it leads me to criticize my work even more than what I've already just done.

first night, called it quits

second night, tried to "fix" a few things

#249, #250, #251 A Trio of Acrylics 11/26/19

Work has been hell the past few weeks, and it has eaten into my free time to such an extent that I am quite crabby.  No time to paint, it's been awful.  I have to choose between eating a late dinner and going to bed vs painting and going to bed.  Dinner wins, as stress eating is part of my coping repertoire.  Fortunately we had a trip planned to Michigan to see my family for Thanksgiving.  It was wonderful!  I was going to bring up this very cool robot craft project for the nieces and nephews, but at the last minute I couldn't find the robot body parts (wood scraps)....without that, there wasn't a project.  But I did have a bajillion matte board center cut-outs from packaging all my paintings for the "Christmas on the Hill" show.  So I brought all of those, with red, blue, yellow, white and black acrylic paints - a limited palette.  After dinner, I set up a still-life scene in the middle of my sister-in-law's dining room table and all the kids painted.  Even a few adults painted.  Ahhhh, it felt good.  Except it wasn't oils.  The acrylics seemed very thick and the cheap paint brushes I had brought seemed very flimsy, so it was with great difficulty that I was able to get paint on the matte board.  The first one was the teapot, free-handed with only paint, no pencil.  It went quick.  The second one was the lemon, free-handed again and it took much longer, as I wasn't satisfied with the 3-D aspect (it looked 2.2D).  The third one I painted my nephew Noah, who was sitting across from me at the table.  I kept adding paint, and adding paint, and at one point somebody said "wow, that looks like Mr. Spock from Star Trek".  Noah is 14....and hardly looks like Mr. Spock...once I fixed the ear, it was a bit better but still didn't quite capture Noah.  The good part of acrylic painting was (and I can't believe I'm saying this) that the layers dried quickly, so I could keep adding more.  The whole reason I got hooked on oil was that it DIDN'T dry quickly and I could mix things on the canvas, and remove things, and not have to feel like anything was "done" till I was ready.  Turns out you can take as long as you like with acrylics too....you just have to blend the colors first and then add them to the canvas.  The colors aren't quite as intense....so that can be a draw-back.

#248 Sleepy Pup 11/15/19

After the PITA parrot yesterday, this little pup was a breath of fresh air.  I confess I traced, only to alleviate the horridness of the parrot painting....but it was such a minimal amount of tracing, really just where did the nose and eyes belong.  I wanted to keep this one very loose, so as to translate his loose fur.  He went MUCH quicker than you know who, and if I were a dog-person I'd probably like this dog!

#247 Green Parrot 11/14/19

I'm into free-handing my drawings now.....and after this parrot, I'm thinking of reverting back to tracings.  I just could not get happy with this guy - he looked "off".  So I'd widen the neck, then move the wing, then make the beak bigger, then make the wings smaller....it went on and on and I kept thinking "if I'd have just traced the bugger, I'd be enjoying this a whole lot more!"  The only parts I really like are his eyes, and the green on green background.  Perhaps this one will grow on me, but for now his name is "PITA".

#246 Two Tomatoes 11/10/19

I have painted this photo before....it was my "super-fast" painting, done it like 20 minutes as near as I can recall, and it turned out pretty good with a loose feel.  It sold quick, so now, months later, I'm revisiting it.....and it's not so fast and loose.  It took more like an hour this time, so much for progress!  I stressed over the fact that it seemed to be floating, rather than resting on a surface.  Usually a bit of dark-dark colors near the bottom edge solve that problem....but it just seemed to continue to float.  So the next day I put some red in as part of the shadow color, and it helped just a bit.  They still seems to hover though. I should call this one "miracle 'maters"